The Friendship Trigger

Where is the persuasion in an interview? Only everywhere! Unless interview subjects are persuaded – early, often, and throughout – to trust, open up, reveal, delve deep and share, the resulting program is likely to be flat and superficial. Much of today's media interview landscape is buoyed by means other than a mining of substance: promotional incentives, zany antics, or sheer personality. Perhaps ironically, Howard Stern resorts to none of these. 

Whether it's a grandfather's gentle encouragement that helped create a rock god like Keith Richards, the naiveté that enabled Carol Burnett to plow through auditions packed with much more attractive women, or the demons that plagued Robin Williams, Howard Stern stands alone as a prolific producer of interviews featuring a degree of substance that offers real and valuable insight into the movers and shakers of our times. How does he do it?

Howard Stern began his career as a provocative radio shock jock in the 1980s, gaining fame for his controversial and boundary-pushing style. Over the years, he evolved into a revered media titan, transforming from a polarizing figure to a respected interviewer. Stern is now celebrated for his ability to connect deeply with his guests and bring out their most candid and revealing moments.

What's his secret?  How does Howard Stern approach his communications in a way that invites his guests to be so much more comfortable, trusting, and revealing than virtually any other broadcaster? Like much of effective, productive communication, emotional triggers can be used as a highly effective diagnostic tool to identify the methods and tactics for success.

There is no more effective context for persuasion than a foundation of comfort and trust. Only most people – even persuasion-dependent professionals like entrepreneurs, marketers, and salespeople – either don't appreciate the degree of power this factor actually has on persuasion success, or else they believe it can be accomplished with some semblance of what every sales training program for the last 50 years has called, "establishing rapport."

Friendliness is not friendship, and rapport usually falls far short of a genuine human connection.

In neuroscience terms, a solid foundation of comfort and trust is produced primarily by activation of two emotional triggers: Friendship and Authority. With his fame and reputation, Howard Stern needn't manage or message much of anything to activate the Authority Trigger. Stern's genius is in the emphasis he places on the Friendship Trigger, and the lengths to which he goes to activate it amply and often.

Research and Respect, Reveals and Vulnerability 

HOWARD STERN: Your first big job in show business, the genius Paul Winchell, who was a ventriloquist, he hired you –

CAROL BURNETT: (laughing) How do you know all this!?

HOWARD STERN: I know about you.

CAROL BURNETT: (incredulous) You're amazing!

Stern delves so deeply into the background of his subjects that he often comes to the interview knowing more about them than they remember about themselves. This level of preparation shows tremendous respect and suggests that he truly cares about the quality of the interview and how well the subject will be perceived. It's a level of dedication that inspires topics and discussions that are both highly personal and deeply meaningful, creating an atmosphere of genuine connection and trust.

This is classic Friendship Trigger territory. By coming to an encounter – any encounter – with as much deep background as possible on the other person, the chances of making a genuine and positive human connection go way up. And, far from seeming creepy in our age of instant data retrieval and readily available profiles, an obvious level of in-depth research is often more flattering than alarming.

Favorable Buying Conditions

But Stern's special genius, and a masterful activation of the Friendship Trigger, lies in his ability to talk about himself in a way that is directly and often intimately related to the other person's experience. These revelations are measured, and never self-indulgent. But they are often highly personal. They highlight similarities and shared experiences, the very essence of the Friendship Trigger. By divulging his own vulnerabilities, Stern creates a permission structure for his subjects to unlock inhibitions, fostering a sense of camaraderie and mutual trust that transforms the interview into a compelling and revealing conversation.

Indeed, "permission structure" is a uniquely appropriate way to think about what persuasive people actually do that others – conventional salespeople, for instance – don't. Persuasive people, as the saying goes, don't sell; they create favorable buying conditions. In other words, they build a permission structure for the customer to feel comfortable – comfortable enough to say yes.

That's real persuasion – not convincing, or coercion, or manipulation, but the establishment of an environmental framework wherein the other person feels enough comfort and trust to reveal meaningful information, to contemplate change, and to feel enough reduction of risk to make a buying decision.

It's a common question in our workshops, seminars, and coaching programs: How do you activate the Friendship Trigger with someone you hardly know, or don't even know at all? And while it's true that deeper, longer-term relationships, those that can benefit from shared experiences, are especially fertile ground for influence and persuasion, the factors that can activate the Friendship Trigger are quite broad and various, and don't always require the level of common ground achieved only through relationship building.

A Business Built Entirely on the Friendship Trigger

My first new business venture was one of those early dot-com wild rides. It was New York in the late ‘90s, and for an internet startup that wound up on the cover of PC Magazine, The New York Times, and CNN, the fact that none of us were technologists might have seemed a hindrance. Even a dealbreaker. In fact, our IT ignorance turned out to be a key factor in our success. Why? Because of the remarkable (and often unrecognized) power of the Friendship Trigger.

Our venture was essentially as a broker for entertainment content from the major motion picture studios and television networks ported to the most popular digital platforms of the day, like CompuServe, AOL, and various website destinations. It isn't well remembered today, but the entertainment companies were remarkably slow on the uptake when it came to what was then called "new media." Few if any resources were deployed in-house at the studios and networks to properly prepare and position their publicity and marketing content to the exploding online audience. Our first big hire was a team to scan printed press kits all day!

We were distinguished by an array of “firsts,” including first live online coverage of the Oscar®, Emmy, and Tony awards; first digital media company invited to the motion picture premiere junkets; and first to upload movie trailers, including exclusive access to Disney animation. Common now, back in the day it was a very big deal. Our posting of the trailer for The Lion King was so groundbreaking and popular it crashed servers all over the world.

But why us? Why us rather than the dozens of other firms (including major players like Microsoft) that had sought to engage the entertainment industry to traffic their wildly popular marketing content?

In fact, the folks at the studios and networks told us exactly why: precisely because we were not technologists. Turns out everyone who had come before us to engage them for digital operations seemed and sounded like they were from another planet. (It's useful to remember that, prior to social media, online channels were thought of as being for computer geeks, science nerds, and social misfits.)

We didn’t speak geek. All of us had come out of burgeoning careers in media and entertainment, where we spoke the same language as those in the show biz marketing departments. We understood their concerns, risks, rewards and, importantly, we didn’t intimidate them with technobabble.

Reading a draft of Dad’s book, The 7 Triggers to Yes, years later, I was finally able to put a name to the phenomenon that made us the most persuasive choice in an early competitive bid for the entertainment industry’s digital business: the Friendship Trigger. It wasn't about close personal relationships, but about the favorable degree of sameness and similarity we had with our prospects, so starkly contrasted with those they had encountered before (see: the Contrast Trigger). That's what made us the preferred choice to help move them into an exciting and risky new category.

We weren’t any more qualified than anyone else, and we certainly had no conscious idea of triggers or the tools of persuasion. It was all luck and timing.

The good news is that you can reduce dependence on luck and timing by using tools of persuasion which only became available since the advent of live brain imaging around the turn of the century. The surprising discoveries of this technology revealed to neuroscience the disproportionate impact of the emotional brain on human decision-making, and proved the effectiveness of emotional triggers for more persuasive communication.

Pro Tips: Activating The Friendship Trigger For New Business

• Consider the culture and style of your colleague, prospect, or market and either match yours with theirs or assign someone who matches them naturally.
   
• Do your homework. Find aspects and areas of personal and professional similarities to which you can refer.
   
• Don’t dismiss mentions of shared interests as ‘small talk.’ It’s more important than you may think. The value of a personal connection is not just for “greasing the wheel” toward smoother interactions, but for more effective persuasion.
   
• Speak their language, not yours. Don’t try to impress with jargon or arcane knowledge unless that’s their practice or inclination.
   
• Be the path of least resistance. In a climate of uncertainty, threat, or fear, the right solution is often the one that’s comfortable; be the path of least resistance and watch your yes ratio soar.

When it comes to getting new business, credentials are key (see: the Authority Trigger). But if you’re already in the room (virtual or otherwise), the value of human connection, established or strengthened by activating the Friendship Trigger, will almost always get you further and faster in your persuasion campaign.